Are you a photography masochist?

mshchem

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Absolutely beautiful. That's back when, uh, what's her name, safety woman had one because you could stack these 5 high. Probably the best manufactured car of the time. Looks like no rust! Love the color. That bike looks like it could go faster forward than in free fall!
 
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Huss

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There is a really cool custom Volvo wagon in my neighbourhood. I should go find it and take a snap so you can see. Riveted bodywork...
 

MattKing

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And if you are really lucky, it will have been made in Canada!
 

VinceInMT

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Here’s a better photo of my Volvo wagon. Yes, pretty rust free. Over 200K on it and I’d hop in it today and head out for a cross country trip. Volvo people say this is the one car that they got totally right.

And, yes, the motorcycle is fast. 145HP. I’ve been asked how fast it will go and I answer that I don’t know and I’m not going to find out.


 

VinceInMT

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While we are on that masochism and cars, my other Volvo, a ‘59 544 demands equal time. I bought this in 1977. It got put away when I moved to Montana but my son and I got it out of it’s slumber and got it back on the road. It is brain dead simple to work on but like all vintage cars, it’s usually in need one thing or another. It’s still 6-volts but I have a 12-volt battery in the trunk to run the 8-track player and the CD player hidden in the glove box.

It’s really fun to drive and gets lots of looks.

 

Sirius Glass

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I got my 1970 Honda 350CB up to 100+ on the Pacific Coast Highway but the cracks in the road started coming too fast for me to go any faster. Better to chicken out then earning wings.
 

VinceInMT

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Sirius Glass said:
I got my 1970 Honda 350CB up to 100+ on the Pacific Coast Highway but the cracks in the road started coming too fast for me to go any faster. Better to chicken out then earning wings.
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Back in the day (late-70s) I took my stock ‘76 Honda CB750 out to Hwy 247 that runs from out in the Mohave desert to the Lucerne Valley. It was brand new black top and I cranked it up to 120mph. That was enough. Just like my personal running, I am now more interested in endurance than speed. This scary thing about this new bike is that it feels the same at 55 as it does at 95. At my age I am no longer interested in speed and I also know I have developed a severe allergy to asphalt when contacted at speed. Now I live an hour from the Beartooth Highway and settle for scenery and twisty roads.
 

mshchem

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The other day I was on my Ebike, I am fortunate to have some nice paved trails near by. I stopped at the top of a hill, made reasonably sure no one was in my path. I had to brake a bit at first to be sure no one really was in my way, I looked down at the speedo I think it said 33 mph, only coasting, I started pedaling coming up the other side when I dropped down to about 10 mph, the electric kicked in and I started downshifting. I've gone faster on a bicycle in my youth, but at 65 years old that was plenty fast. There are trees along the trail, doesn't take a vivid imagination to realize how bad that would be.
 

grat

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Sirius Glass said:
Better to chicken out then earning wings.
Click to expand...

or, "Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly"-- ironically (or perhaps not), that was taped to the inside of the Vampire dragster that Richard Hammond crashed.

Personally, I try not to outrun my brakes, although I once got my Triumph Legend up to 120-- which was a bit of a surprise really, because the speed limiter should have kicked in around 110. Bit of a strange bike-- theoretically designed for women (short seat height), the styling says "retro cruiser" or "UJM" for those who remember the phrase, but the geometry says "sport bike"-- but who ever heard of a sport bike with wire rims?
 

Vaughn

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My brother had a KZ1000 while stationed in Kansas (Air Force) in the 70s. He claims to hold the land speed record for the base...and that he ended up having to push the bike from the gate to where he parked it. We figure he is still alive because it was stolen before he could kill himself.
 

Roger Cole

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I still do - two cars, both manual transmissions. I also collect vinyl records and run older tube type ham radio gear (some newer radios too but my newest is actually from the 90s.)
 

Sirius Glass

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Ever drive a motorcycle in the US Midwest?
Drive in a straight line for 20 miles and make a right turn.
Drive in a straight line for 20 miles and make a right turn.
Drive in a straight line for 20 miles and make a right turn.
Drive in a straight line for 20 miles and now you are home.
Wasn't that fun? NOT!
 
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Huss

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Roger Cole said:
Sure. But they're not as much fun. I also ride a motorcycle. While it gets slightly better mileage than even most subcompact cars, that's not why I ride it either.
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Motorcycles actually get really bad mileage compared to modern cars. My Suzuki TL1000 would get 28-30mpg on premium. 115hp. My Mazda Miata w/ 170hp gets 25-32mpg.
My Harley 96 cube motor w/FI (stock motor) got 36mpg. Back in the day - even in the 80s - one reason to ride motos was because they got better gas mileage than cars.

A giant Toyota Sienna minivan (they are all hybrid this year) gets 45mpg! Yeah, not as fun but I guess it depends on what your idea of fun is. Packing up the van w/dogs, camera gear, gf and camping gear IS fun!
Then again a Ford Raptor truck gets 12mpg..
 

MattKing

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Switching the auto transmission in my wife's Fiat 500 to manual mode (manual shifting with an automatic clutch) is almost as much fun as our manual transmission car, and a lot more pleasant in traffic!
 

Roger Cole

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My Yamaha V-Star 650 gets 48-52 mpg and it will get 48 on any kind of gas I put in it. No-ethanol gets slightly better, not enough to make up for the cost difference, but I still use no-ethanol when I can because it's better for the bike. Not many cars other than hybrids will equal, much less surpass, that. Packing up a vehicle with stuff and driving a lumbering land barge anywhere is not fun, not to me. One may have fun when they GET there, but the going and returning are not, not in the way that riding a motorcycle or driving a car with a manual transmission over winding mountain roads is fun. But of course YMMV and all that.
 

Roger Cole

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No. But I don't live there, nor drive there.
 

Sirius Glass

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I learned to shift on a 1957 Volkswagen. Then in 1979 I bought a Toyota Celica with a hydraulic clutch -- what a difference.

Back to the '57 VW. One day while the car was parked I shifted in to Reverse and there was a loud bang. I did it again with the same result. It then dawned on me that I had to engage the clutch. As I drove off there was a new "scup scup" noise. The noise was there whenever the car was in reverse, first or second. My father was no pleased with my work. Then one day someone cut my father off while the car was in fourth gear, and he dropped the car from fourth to second and brought his foot half way off the clutch. The transmission howled like a siren and the driver of the offending car immediately pulled to the side of the road. My father shot past him. I was forgiven and that maneuver became standard procedure for the family in that car. When our mechanic learned about it he tried without success to modify the reverse first second gear to reproduce the effect on other VWs but never succeeded.
 

Vaughn

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I drove a 1971 SuperBeetle for a dozen years. Not as much pain as British machine, just the routine of getting under it every 1500 miles to change the oil (and adjust the values every second oil change). But at least cheap -- 2.5 quarts of oil and no filter to buy. Go anywhere (within reason, but hey, its a VW, let's go!), up to 30 mpg, and relatively dependable.

I down shifted from third to second my VW Campervan to pull into the ranger station for work at 6:45am (had just driven 150 miles from home) and the tranny just froze up when I let the clutch out. That was a surprise and a bummer.

But so far, I have foregone the pain of 35mm.
 
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BrianShaw

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MattKing said:
Switching the auto transmission in my wife's Fiat 500 to manual mode (manual shifting with an automatic clutch) is almost as much fun as our manual transmission car, and a lot more pleasant in traffic!
Click to expand...

That seems to satisfy some folks but I just can't abide. Either a clutch-and-=shift or an automatic; I've had automatics for the past 25 years not so much by choice but mostly because that's primarily what is sold. I started really liking the 7-speed + 2 speed reverse in my last car. Current car has a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) and they included a "manual shift mode". How utterly bizarre, both the concept and the feel when it is actually used.
 

MattKing

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BrianShaw said:
That seems to satisfy some folks but I just can't abide. Either a clutch-and-=shift or an automatic
Click to expand...

It may be car/engine/transmission dependent. The Fiat is light and maneuverable, has a high compression engine that is wonderfully responsive, and the six forward gears are extremely well spaced. I can also, with a flip of a single switch, change the valve timing plus a few other settings to make the car very responsive.
It does, unfortunately, run best with premium gas. And if that switch is flipped to "sport" mode, it definitely uses more of that gas!

The sport mode switch also changes the shift points when the car is running in auto transmission mode.

The manual transmission version of the car would be more fun at times, but not in stop and go traffic.
 
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